Laundry

I do a load of laundry every morning.

There’s something about doing laundry that makes me feel good. The draw might be the warmth of the clothes right out of the dryer. Maybe it’s the scent of Downy that reminds me of peaceful places.

Really, I mostly think that doing laundry makes me feel like I’m taking care of the people that I love in a very practical, yet intimate way.

Every morning after the washer finishes spinning, I open the dryer door and throw the damp clothes in for their next adventure. The last thing I do before closing the door is to remove the lint screen and roll up the lint to toss it into the garbage.

It's at this point that I have exactly the same thought – every day.

It must have been ten years ago or more that I read something that the Christian music artist Steven Curtis Chapman said and it has stayed with me ever since. He was making a list of things he was thankful for and one of them was that there was just enough moisture on your hands from clean laundry to pull the lint out of the dryer screen.

Why do I think of that every day??

It’s entirely possible that there’s a part of my brain that suffers from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Wouldn’t surprise me at all. It also occurs to me that it might be a spiritual nudging towards gratitude.

Meister Eckhart, 14th century theologian and mystic, said that “if the only prayer you ever said was thanks, it would suffice.” I believe that could be true.

There are a huge variety of words, thoughts and feelings that relate to gratitude – the continuum stretches from greed to jealousy; from the inability to notice the sacred around us to feelings of entitlement and selfishness. The idea of gratitude also includes feelings and actions associated with appreciation, acceptance and satisfaction.

Most of us spend a good part of our days wanting something more. Something better. Something different. We can’t be grateful because we’re too busy making comparisons and coveting other possibilities. We are either angry and disappointed about yesterday or anxious about tomorrow.

This morning I held a clean sweatshirt up to my face and inhaled the sweet, warm scent. For that single moment gratitude was enough.